High above the dark rock ridge, the tightened ring of Heaven’s Measure didn’t drop its entire weight upon the mountain. Instead, a single sliver of condensed white light—six feet long and shaped like the edge of a land-mapper’s flat ruler—detached itself from the southern rim of the sky-slit. As it began its long, whistling glide down the air currents of the upper valley, the quartz lens on Vaska’s stone stand spun once in its bronze gimbal and pointed south-southwest over the court’s outer wall.
Seyun, Hall Mistress Soran, and Ilyra reached the southern stone low roof wall together. Below the seal court, the pine-forested spur dropped steeply past the limestone caves of the lower hospice toward the terraced agricultural benches two miles down-valley. Bracing his Account Book against the frost-cracked coping stone, Seyun sighted along the angle of Vaska’s bronze gimbal and laid his charcoal stick across the valley map he had sketched during the ascent.
“It isn’t falling on this court,” Seyun said, his finger tracing the line past the hospice gorge to a wooded knoll halfway down the eastern hillside. “And it’s passing four hundred paces east of the hospice caves.”
As the detached six-foot sliver of white light began its long, whistling descent from the northern sky-slit ring toward the wooded knolls two miles south, Chief Examiner Vaska Ren hurried from the surveying stone stand to the southern low roof wall with his brass plotting compass in hand. Vaska laid the compass edge against the charcoal valley…
